Android is only “Quasi Open Source”

Stephen Shankland in his “Deep Tech” blog for CNET is reporting that Andy Rubin, the leader of Google’s Android Project has stated that Android is open source from a “software” perspective not a “community” perspective.

Shankland writes:

The reason for Google’s approach is so the company can control Android’s interfaces, the underlying features that Android apps use, Rubin told reporters at the Google I/O conference.
These application programming interfaces (APIs) are best developed in private and released only when Google deems them done, a process that ensures app compatibility, he said.
“Open source is different than a community-driven project,” Rubin said, in which a broad collection of people collectively determine the software’s future. “Android is light on the community-driven side and heavy on open source.”